Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-09-30DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12366
John Freebairn
{"title":"Economic Problems with Subsidies for Electric Vehicles","authors":"John Freebairn","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12366","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12366","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The use of motor vehicles in Australia generates external costs. The external costs are associated with government expenditure on road infrastructure, traffic congestion and road accidents as well as pollution. A subsidy for electric vehicles will reduce the pollution external cost, and more so as the share of electricity generated from fossil fuels declines. However, the subsidy-induced increase in motor vehicle use will increase the other external costs. Also, the subsidy and the fall in excise tax revenue collected will add to the budget deficit. The phase-in of electric vehicles provides an opportunity to reform special taxes and charges on the use of motor vehicles. The current ad hoc and long time ago imposed government taxes and charges on motor vehicles should be replaced with explicit taxes to internalise each of the external costs of motor vehicles.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 4","pages":"360-368"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1759-3441.12366","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132932681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12365
Kerry Liu
{"title":"China's Reform Spree in 2021: Common Prosperity and Others","authors":"Kerry Liu","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12365","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12365","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 2021, China launched a series of reform initiatives including common prosperity, a property tax, a regulatory crackdown on technology firms, a roadmap for peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality and other policies aiming to improve people's lives. This study reviews each of them and finds that they are centred around common prosperity and guiding resource allocation. Based on Google Trends search results, this study creatively created a series of common prosperity policy indices, showing that China in 2021 may have experienced the most important policy shift since at least 2004. Based on EGARCH and ARDL models, this study finds that the whole economy, proxied by two popular composite indices, i.e. the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index and the China Securities Index 300, responded positively to the common prosperity policy. Stock market responses also show that China's policies have successfully guided the resource allocation from the soft technology sector to the hard technology one. This study also discusses the broad implications, such as the role of the government and the evolution of private ownership in the Chinese economy.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"232-246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126926102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12364
Nitin Arora, Deepika Malik, Rahul Arora
{"title":"Which Combination of Impossible Trinity Choices Ensures Output and Price Stabilities in India? A Sign-Restricted Vector Autoregressive Analysis","authors":"Nitin Arora, Deepika Malik, Rahul Arora","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12364","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12364","url":null,"abstract":"<p>India has faced the impossible trinity challenge after it opened up its capital account post-1990s reforms. Accordingly, simultaneous achievement of three macroeconomic objectives, namely exchange Rate Stability, capital openness and monetary independence, is an impossible task and any combination of two objectives can be achieved by losing the third one. This attempt, therefore, validates the existence of impossible trinity in India and investigates its impact on the stability of both, economic growth and prices. The sign-restricted vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology has been used to confirm the existence of impossible trinity and to identify the best trilemma policy combination for the Indian economy in order to achieve stable output growth with steady prices. A trinity combination of “capital openness” and “exchange rate stability” is found to be the best in achieving stability of macroeconomic indicators under evaluation. Furthermore, the absence of trinity in India is inferred to ensure macroeconomic stability. However, maintaining its absence for a substantial period is noticed to be a near-impossible task.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"260-275"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123039232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12363
Ayona Bhattacharjee, Kshitij Awasthi
{"title":"How Does Education Affect Health Beliefs? A Case of Women in India","authors":"Ayona Bhattacharjee, Kshitij Awasthi","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12363","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12363","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Positive externalities of education on health have been widely studied in the prior literature. However, the focus has been on the count of years of schooling rather than the levels of schooling, which is a commonly overlooked yet meaningful way of assessing the education – health relationship. Further, the role of health beliefs in determining the relation between education and health has been understudied, particularly for women. We address these two important questions by using a large-scale household survey data from India. We find that education levels have differential impact on health beliefs and the impact is highest for individuals with higher levels of education. These findings indicate how educational interventions at lower levels can be effective in improving health beliefs to encourage appropriate health behaviour from early stages of life.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"189-201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115385210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-07-26DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12362
Nitin Arora, Shubham Monga, Dilpreet Sharma
{"title":"Coordination of Monetary and Fiscal Policies for Growth with Price Stability in a Post-COVID-19 Indian Economy*","authors":"Nitin Arora, Shubham Monga, Dilpreet Sharma","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12362","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12362","url":null,"abstract":"<p>During the post-COVID period, demand augmenting policies were needed and have been exercised by the Government of India to prevent the Indian economy from falling into recession. However, these demand augmenting policies seem to be inflationary as in the recent past high inflation has been observed in India. Thus, optimum combination of monetary and fiscal policies is needed to simultaneously achieve the objectives of demand growth and price stability. This paper proposes combinations of the two policies based on the results of a sign-restricted vector autoregressive (VAR) modelling framework. The experimentation was performed using sign restrictions on macroeconomic target variables viz. demand growth and inflation rate while leaving the policy variables free to suggest proposed stances to achieve desired objectives. On the basis of the empirical findings, the proposed stances of monetary and fiscal authorities were then compared with the actual stances and requisite correction in the policy behaviours has been suggested in terms of improvements to the magnitude and frequency of contraction and expansion.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"247-259"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114915691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-06-30DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12361
Marc Jim Mariano, George Verikios
{"title":"Understanding the Effects of Coronavirus on Australian Households: A Macro–Micro Analysis","authors":"Marc Jim Mariano, George Verikios","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12361","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12361","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic brought economic recession that affected nations, businesses, and households globally. The severity of this global economic crisis is large and the impact has been asymmetric across socioeconomic groups. We examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across household types using a specially-designed model that combines macro (computable general equilibrium) and micro (heterogenous households) approaches. Computable general equilibrium models are able to capture behavioural changes in macroeconomic and sectoral variables but they often lack the rich distributional detail found in microsimulation models. In this paper, we address this limitation by incorporating 10,046 actual households into a computable general equilibrium model to capture the heterogeneity through which the pandemic may influence household behaviour. We find that the income effects are asymmetric across income groups leading to a slight increase in income inequality. The distributional effects are more progressive for non-wage income sources and uniform for wage income. For younger cohorts, income changes are dominated by employment effects whereas income changes for older cohorts are dominated by changes in capital rentals and government transfers. Spatially, the income effects follow a similar pattern for city and non-city dwellers.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"215-231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127460095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-06-30DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12359
Michael B. Charles, Marcus Harmes, Michael A. Kortt
{"title":"Is it Time to Rationalise Humanities Education in Australian Public Universities?","authors":"Michael B. Charles, Marcus Harmes, Michael A. Kortt","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12359","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12359","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines how Australian public universities have a presence in the various discipline areas recognised by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Using the prism of public value, we interpret how universities articulate the legitimacy of teaching humanities. Through a careful audit of available secondary data, we advance a typology of humanities education. Our principal finding is that Australia's humanities presence is surprisingly homogenous, with only a few universities proposing a specialised offering. We contend that this creates an environment where universities may be forced to consider abandoning their humanities offerings unless a higher degree of differentiation takes place.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"202-214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116993238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-06-30DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12360
Stephen Anthony, Hamid Yahyaei
{"title":"Bringing Credibility Back to Macroeconomic Policy Frameworks","authors":"Stephen Anthony, Hamid Yahyaei","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12360","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12360","url":null,"abstract":"<p>For most of the past decade, unconventional monetary policies (UMPs) have affected the wealth of savers, renters and younger generations. These policies, which enlarge central bank balance sheets – supporting credit expansion in the economy – but have no reliable mechanism for reversal, raise the simultaneous risk of higher inflation and deflation. In this paper, we critique UMPs by drawing on extant literature and empirical data that elucidate the undesired economic effects they cultivate. In particular, we focus on the implications of UMPs on efficient portfolio holdings by proposing an intuitive ex-ante measure of dynamic efficiency loss that has applications for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 3","pages":"276-295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115837874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-06-05DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12358
Shawn Blankinship, Laura Lamb
{"title":"Exploring First Nation Community Well-being in Canada: The Impact of Geographic and Financial Factors","authors":"Shawn Blankinship, Laura Lamb","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12358","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12358","url":null,"abstract":"<p>First Nation community well-being is examined with a lens on the role of geographic location and financial indicators as potential determinants of well-being. Regression analysis makes use of data from the 2016 Canadian Census and First Nation government financial statements to examine six well-being indices for 446 First Nation communities. The results suggest that geographic location is the most critical factor explaining well-being with more remote and northern communities experiencing relatively lower levels of measures of well-being, with the exception of Indigenous language. Numerous well-being distinctions are also identified among the Canadian provinces and regions. The financial indicators assessing transfer revenue from First Nation entities and Nation-owned business activity are found to be positively associated with community well-being. These insights are valuable to public policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, in Canada and other countries, as they shape policy for the benefit of First Nation people.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 2","pages":"128-154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131063297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic PapersPub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12336
Andrew Leigh
{"title":"Engaged Egalitarianism: Why the Australian Recovery Must Prioritise Openness*","authors":"Andrew Leigh","doi":"10.1111/1759-3441.12336","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1759-3441.12336","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Australian living standards, relative to the rest of the world, have been highest in eras of economic openness. Openness can also increase equality. Tariffs tend to be regressive, so poor households benefit most from trade liberalisation. In the case of immigration, skilled permanent migrants tend to earn considerably more than the Australian-born population, so any wage pressures are felt at the upper end of the distribution. Foreign investment can also have an equalising effect, by raising wages and lowering the rate of return on domestic capital. An approach of engaged egalitarianism – ensuring that the gains from globalisation are broadly shared – will benefit the most disadvantaged Australians.</p>","PeriodicalId":45208,"journal":{"name":"Economic Papers","volume":"41 2","pages":"99-109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129170720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}